mdrockwell
mdrockwell

I see a lot of people discussing CMS choices this morning. What’s the biggest reason for using something other than WordPress?

I just don’t understand the appeal and am genuinely curious. 🤔

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pimoore
pimoore

@mdrockwell I like the idea of static sites and having everything in plain text markdown that’s easily portable to a different platform if needs change. To me it feels like less moving parts with static as opposed to Wordpress, which to me equates to fewer points of failure.

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mdrockwell
mdrockwell

@gr36 interesting. I think the low-friction nature of plugins and themes likely contributes to this — both installing and developing. You sort-of have to be careful with what and how much you install.

On the security front, built-in support for automatic updates is a huge development and is still a fairly new feature.

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mdrockwell
mdrockwell

@peterimoore gotcha, interesting perspective 👍

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pimoore
pimoore

@mdrockwell I read about your move to SiteGround, how are you finding the service? Are you using the Wordpress hosting, or just the standard one with WP installed?

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mdrockwell
mdrockwell

@peterimoore I’m loving it! I have their GrowBig web hosting plan: www.siteground.com/web-hosti...

Sometimes I wish it was slightly more flexible — mostly because so many of the self-hosted projects I find require Docker. But it’s excellent for what I’m using it for so far.

I have 5 WordPress installs, two static sites, and a few PHP apps. All of them are rock-solid.

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pimoore
pimoore

@mdrockwell that discounted price is temporary I’m assuming? If I was to do a 180 and want to use WP, I like the fact it’s managed. Yes, I can get my hands dirty, but I don’t want to for the most part.

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mdrockwell
mdrockwell

@peterimoore that pricing is just for the first year and I think only if you sign up for yearly billing. You can change the billing frequency at-will, though. So it will go up when it renews for me. I'll probably keep yearly billing since it's cheaper than monthly in the long run.

But I was with Media Temple previously and paid for SSL certs separately. So even their monthly billing will be cheaper for me than what I had before — because I'm hosting so much on it.

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adders
adders

@mdrockwell For me, it's just that I don’t really like the WordPress UI, and I happen to love the Ghost one. So I default to Ghost.

That said, I believe it's fundamentally important that we have multiple, competing CMSes for the health of the ecosystem.

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mdrockwell
mdrockwell

@adders oh absolutely! A healthy CMS market is extremely important!

And I totally understand the UI criticism. There are some neat admin themes available, but none of them are particularly popular. I'd like to see some advancements on that front in WordPress Core.

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In reply to
pimoore
pimoore

@gr36 for me it’s not about the cost, so much as I don’t want to spend the time managing a web-facing server. I could do it, but I’d much rather have something managed for me, or just use a server-less static option. I’d rather save my time and focus on myself and my content.

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jmreekes
jmreekes

@gr36 Was it hard to get WordPress running on a DO droplet?

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adders
adders

@mdrockwell To be fair, my dislike of WordPress’s UI is more aesthetic than anything else. It does everything I need it to well. I just don’t like it.

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